


Unapologetic

by her_majesty_wears_jeans



Series: Outside the (Ask) Box [5]
Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: Feminist Themes, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2020-11-24 10:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20905970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/her_majesty_wears_jeans/pseuds/her_majesty_wears_jeans
Summary: Alison is nervous about a school debate because she knows first-hand what can happen when people think a woman is "too passionate" about an issue.





	Unapologetic

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble prompt, word + character: ”unapologetic “ + Alison McCord

Carefully watching the way her hair moves as she twirls in front of the mirror, Alison purses her lips in displeasure. Despite the extra effort she has put in her appearance that morning, she doesn’t feel as confident as she would like. With a look at the clock, Alison is forced to deem herself tolerable for the day.

Unplugging her phone, she tosses it in her bag along with the lip-gloss she grabs from her desk, but as she reaches for the debate notes, she pauses, her hand hovering above the two small stacks of paper.

She stayed up till midnight to write her notes for the debate; partly because she wanted to be thorough, but she would’ve been finished by ten already if she hadn’t decided to do a second set of notes.

The topic is transferring national factories overseas to third world countries – sweatshops, grimaced Stevie when Alison talked about it the past week. Sharing her sister’s disgust, Alison is happy she’ll be against, but she’s not happy to have to go against Noah Mercer. He’s smart and quick and expressive, probably takes after his lawyer dad, and though Alison is pretty sure he’s compassionate enough to actually agree with her on the fact that the “lenient” labor laws are wrong, he can definitely argue his assigned side of the case.

Alison’s not bad herself, she likes to think. She’s prepared well, she knows what she’s talking about, and she’s passionate about the topic. Ironically, that’s kind of the problem. She realized it the previous night when she was rehearsing in front of the mirror; she accidentally spat on it. Completely randomly and by coincidence (she’s refined enough not to typically do things like that, thank you very much), and though she knew it didn’t really mean anything, at the moment, it gave her pause.

She wants to make herself heard, but she can’t come across as a fanatic. She doesn’t want to come on too strong. She’s seen it in media and heard it firsthand from her mom; no one will listen to her if they decide she’s too emotional.

Her mom is an ex-CIA academic turned diplomat, and her dad’s an ethics professor; Alison has been taught to be polite and agreeable, to listen to all sides of the argument. Sometimes she worries if she’s taken the advice to heart a little too well. She’ll never win the debate against Noah Mercer of all people if she has to spend even a fraction of focus on filtering herself.

With a sigh and a frown she tries to mask, she packs the less aggressive version of her notes and trudges to the kitchen for breakfast. 

“Hey, Noodle.”

Alison’s saved from faking a smile for her mom by a phone ringing. Her mom ahs, picks her blackberry up and takes a deep breath before answering it, dropping a kiss on Alison’s head as she breezes past her and out the door.

“What was that about?” Jason asks, hopping down the stairs and making a beeline for the cereal.

Stevie shrugs, smirking. “Mom gave a bit of a dressing down to some foreign diplomat for being a jerk, and Russell Jackson had a fit.”

Jason looks like he’s about to say something, but their dad cuts in with a suppressed laugh and a stern look to Stevie, effectively preventing Jason from voicing his surely-less-than-gracious comment. As their dad struggles to explain the situation a little more diplomatically, Alison tunes the rest of her family out and eyes the contents of the fridge.

It’s not the plentiful breakfast choices that have her brain whirring, though.

Pretty much her whole life, Alison has heard how she was the politest child anyone had ever met. She said please and thank you, rarely got into trouble and those times, usually apologized on her own accord. It earned her praise from teachers and the parents of her friends, so as she grew up, it became almost like a habit. She didn’t even notice, but soon she was apologizing for everything, taking the blame for things that weren’t her fault.

It was Stevie who made her realize she’d crossed the line between politeness and mousiness. 

Though it made her stomach turn at the time, Alison now thinks back to the first time a boy asked her out with humor. Daryl sat next to her in English, and he was shy but sort of cute. So, even though she didn’t necessarily want to go to the movies with him, she went anyway, because she wanted to say no to him less. The date was fine, but she still went to Stevie afterwards, to ask how to answer if Daryl asked her out again. She had been planning to say sorry, but no. Stevie told her to say no, thanks.

Alison doubts Stevie has ever felt the need to please anyone. On the contrary, there have been moments that have made Alison wonder if Stevie had done everything she could have to purposefully _displease_ their parents. As cliché or conditioned as it is, she still looks up to her big sister, so even though Alison might have rolled her eyes for Stevie’s excessively rebellious and outlandish antics once or twice, secretly she admires her for doing exactly what feels right to her.

Their mom is the same, unconventional to a fault. Russell Jackson isn’t the only one who has had things to say about the out-of-the-box solutions she’s come up with to international crises. They’ve worked often enough though, to his horror. Alison doesn’t always understand why it displeases people. Obviously, there’s a lot she can’t know about her mom’s work, but she knows her mom wouldn’t take the kinds of risks she takes lightly, not if she didn’t believe it was the best, or the only, way to help. And given her position, she can’t afford to wait for or to rely on anyone else’s approval. Henry let it slip once that her defense against the charges from the Marsh’s investigation was basically, “You’re welcome.”

Alison wants to be like that, too.

“Hey Ali, you still okay to give me a ride to school?”

Startled out of her musings, Alison turns to find Jason hasn’t even looked up from his cereal. Putting her dishes to the washer, she rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling when she tells him they’re leaving in five – she’s just going to go grab her notes first.


End file.
